2 x PC's with different download speeds

[millerc75]

Hi all,
This might sound like a stupid question and I apologise if it is! I have a desktop PC and a Laptop which I connect to the same wireless router (Sky Sagem). However I can get about 5mb speed on the desktop but only 3mb on my laptop. I have tried using the same wireless adapter on each and by connecting via Ethernet cable.
My laptop is older and slower than my desktop PC. Also, I have XP on laptop and Vista on my desktop. My question is:

Does my PC speed affect my broadband speed? I thought the speed would be roughly the same on both as it is coming from the same source?

Many Thanks

[dsldude]

In a nutshell Vista is self optimizing on its network adaptor advanced settings to obtain maximum transfer efficiency, XP is not and sometimes needs manually tweaking

Take a look at this program called TCP Optimizer and follow the steps and run this on your XP machine

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

[millerc75]

Thanks very much for that. Got up to 5.5mb speed, so nearly doubled!

[dsldude]

Excellent Work.